


The Night Santa Didn't Come

by lunarknightz



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Christmas, Gen, Kid!Fic, Pre-Series, Pre-Series Dean Winchester, Pre-Series Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-27
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-08-17 13:22:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8145593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunarknightz/pseuds/lunarknightz
Summary: The Night that Santa Claus didn't come to the Winchester house.  Pre-series fic, spoilers only for "Pilot".





	

“Be quiet, Sammy!” 

John Winchester sighed and pushed himself out of his leather recliner at the sound of his oldest son’s voice. Dean was boomeranging again, popping out of bed hours after being put to sleep. It was a bad habit that his eldest child had developed recently, and try as he might John hadn’t been able to get Dean through the night in quite a bit. And since the boys shared a room, two year old Sammy would be up at all of hours of the night as well, tagging along after his older brother. John walked towards the step and was chilled at what he saw.

His boys were sitting on the landing at the top of the steps, still clad in their pyjamas. Dean clutched a rifle in his hands, while Sammy held an axe. 

“What are you doing?” John roared, running up the steps. He’d been teaching Dean the bare bones of self defence and weapon handling, and one of the gifts under the Christmas Tree was a B.B. gun for Dean. It wasn’t easy, raising two little boys while continually going on “spook hunts”-Sam and Dean had seen more violence in their short lives than anyone should ever see. 

John took the axe from Sammy first. 

“Daddy, gimme!” his youngest son cried. “That’s mine.”

“Sam, you know that this is Daddy’s! It belongs in the trunk, which you are not allowed to get into! How did you get this?”

“Dean.” Sammy chirped. 

John turned to Dean, and tried to yank the rifle from his hands. Dean’s six year old hands did not budge. 

“Dean. Give me the gun. Now.” 

“No.” Dean snarled. “It’s mine.”

“If you don’t give me that gun…” John searched for a threat that might make Dean obey him. “…If you don’t give me that gun, then Santa isn’t going to come.”

“Really?” Dean’s face brightened. He turned to his brother. “It worked Sammy! Santa’s not coming! We scared him off!” Dean handed the gun to his father. “You can have this now.”

Stunned, John dropped to his knees. He placed the gun and axe off to the side, out of the boys’ reach, and looked up at his boys.

“You don’t want Santa to come?”

“Duh, Daddy. We don’t want a demon in the house. Sammy and I protected the house, see? Now he didn’t come and we’re safe.”

“You think Santa’s a demon?”

Dean nodded. “He comes at night. He has magical cohorts like reindeer and elves! And you hafta leave him a ritual meal of cookies and milk. Plus I heard that he eats bad people. Sammy and me were handling the case so you could sleep, Daddy.”

Santa a demon? A six and a two year old trying to handle a spook case? Was his obsession with finding what killed Mary robbing his sons of their childhood? What kind of life were they living? His kids couldn’t even enjoy Christmas.

John reached out and hugged both of his boys. 

“Santa isn’t a demon, Dean. You don’t have to be afraid.” He rubbed their heads- Dean’s light hair and Sammy’s dark. “Not everything in the world that seems different is scary. I appreciate you two trying to protect me and let Daddy sleep, but I’m not ready to go out on a job without my two best helpers yet.”

“We are good daddy, ain’t we?”

“Yes.” John said with a bit of pride, and pulled away a bit so he could look both boys in the eye. “You two are wonderful helpers. But you need to promise me, that the next time you think you’ve found a case, you’ll let me know about it. We’ve got to be a team, and that means no breaking into Daddy’s weapons on your own. Got it?”

“Got it.” Dean said, as he let out a big yawn.

John picked up Sammy. “How about we go get some special Christmas coca?”

“Cool!” Dean said, running down the stairs. “I want the red mug!”

“Then I get the blue one.” John called. “Get out the marshmallows, Dean.”

Sammy snuggled close to John as they walked towards the kitchen. “Good boy.” John said softly, squeezing the feet of Sammy’s footie pyjamas softly. He loved his sons so much. They were his life. 

John knew this manner of life wasn’t normal; it certainly wasn’t ideal for a single parent. He worried that it wasn’t the best way to bring up Dean and Sammy. But it was the only way he knew how to live. Chasing down and eliminating the supernatural before it could eliminate them was the only way he could keep his boys safe.

He had failed Mary.

He wouldn’t fail his boys.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted November 2005.


End file.
